David Foster Wallace archive to open with live webcast

(Harry Ransom Center)

The archives of American writer David Foster Wallace are set to be available for viewing at the University of Texas at Austin beginning September 14, announced the University's Harry Ransom Center on September 6. Highlights of the collection include handwritten notes and drafts, research, and teaching materials owned by the Infinite Jest author, who died in 2008.

The David Foster Wallace archive includes handwritten notes and drafts of Infinite Jest, college and graduate school essays, and Wallace's heavily annotated books by Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, John Updike, and more than 40 other authors. Publisher Little, Brown and Company is expected to contribute its editorial files, including materials for Wallace's posthumous novel The Pale King, following that book's publication in April 2011.

Wallace's materials at the Ransom Center reside alongside the papers of writers such as Don DeLillo, Norman Mailer, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett.

The opening the the Wallace archive will be celebrated with an evening of readings of Wallace's work by several writers and actors, set to take place September 14 beginning at 7:00pm CT. The event will be webcast live.

Wallace, who suffered from depression, committed suicide in 2008, after having achieved widespread success for his 1000-page 1996 novel Infinite Jest. His other published works include The Broom of the System, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, and numerous collections of stories and essays.

Watch the webcast (beginning Sepember 14): http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/webcast

Find out more about the collection, and view select materials: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/dfw